Wednesday, October 8, 2008

unexpected 144...

And here's "Unexpected" #144. This DC horror series ran from 1968 until 1982, when they pretty much retired their horror line. 144 was published in 1973 (why are so many of my horror comics from 1973?). I can't find any credits for the cover or the last story, which has some great black cat imagery. The first story is written by Bill Dennehy and draw by Alfred Alcala. The second story is by Carl Wessler, with art by Rueben Yandoc. The third story is also by Wessler, with art by John Calnan. Bill Dennehy was aka DC editor Murray Boltinoff, who had edited Action and Adventure Comics in the 1940s. From the 1960s through the 1980s he was active at DC on superhero (Superboy, Brave & the Bold, Jimmy Olsen), war (G.I. Combat, Our Fighting Forces, Sgt. Rock) and horror titles, as editor and sometimes writer, crafting his horror work under the "Bill Dennehy" alias for some reason.

Ruben Yandoc, nicknamed Rubeny, was another artists recruited by DC from the Phillipines in the early 1970s. I'd be really curious to see some Fillipino comics from the 1960s, obviously there was a relatively huge pool of illustrative talent busting out all over the comics medium 'round that time. I wonder what their influences were, too, that gave their work it's kind of gothic (in the traditional, not fashionable sense) edge and made it so well-suited for horror comics, though I certainly wouldn't have minded seeing Alex Nino take on, say, the Phantom Stranger, or some moody Batman stories by Alfred Alcala. Rubeny worked more-or-less exclusively on horror, science-fiction and war comics.

Carl Wessler had written, in the 1950s, for EC Comics on The Haunt of Fear, Piracy, Impact, Valor and two of my favorite all time comics, Shock Suspenstories and Crime Suspenstories. He wrote for pre-Marvel Atlas Comics and Warren before settling in to DC in the late 1960s, writing for Unexpected, Witching Hour, Ghosts, House of Mystery and Secrets of the Haunted House, plus the occasional war comic. Wessler died in 1989 at age 76. John Calnan pencilled horror, war and superhero comics from 1970 into the early 1980s.